


Daughter of Fire

by featherloom



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Feminist Themes, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 06:16:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5956738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherloom/pseuds/featherloom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the death of a revered shinobi, the wife and daughter of the Daimyo of Fire pay Yuuhi Kurenai a visit to present her with a rare gift - and to ask for a big favor. Think of this as the start of a "Rosie the Riveter" movement in Konoha! </p><p> AU in that the Daimyo of Fire's wife is an original character in this story and not Madame Shijimi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daughter of Fire

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fanfiction. Characters, places, and concepts from  _Naruto_ are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and Viz Media and I do not claim any rights to ownership or compensation. This is just for fun and no harm is intended.

* * *

 

The Daughter of the Daimyo of Fire was finding it an unpardonable struggle to focus on painting her mahjong tiles. Her current piece was a small blue dragon, and this tile was her fourth. The gaze of its beady red eye did not seem right, and something about the curve of its coiling spine seemed grotesque and unnatural instead of embodying the ethereal flow of water she wanted to portray.

Her garments were stiff and uncomfortable against her sweaty skin, despite the servant boy’s lazy swings of a fan, and now circumstances converged to ruin her comfort. The sharp light of the summer sun blinded her through the bamboo shutters, a blasted cuckoo had decided to make its home outside her window, and now another honored ninja was dead.

Honestly, they seemed to drop like butterflies in an early frost these days. It was unpardonably foolish and self-centered of them, she thought, to leave their nation so unprotected, to leave their village in the hands of children and women. In the next room, she could hear her father and brother, wrapped in canopies of robes and ensconced behind the privacy of a silk screen, speaking to the dead man’s three students and their new sensei.

A servant girl brought in the tea china and a parchment note with her mother’s elegant handwriting. The servant girl lingered a little longer than she should have, inclining her head towards a small crevice in the panels between her room and the next to listen. The Daughter of Fire hissed at her, and the servant jumped and raced from the room. The Daughter of Fire shook her head. She would have to speak to the housekeeper about their servants’ discretion. It was most unladylike.

Scowling, the Daughter of Fire opened her mother’s letter and sighed. They were to call upon the dead man’s widow later this evening, to bring a gift from the Daimyo of Fire and speak whatever words it was women spoke to each other in times of death. She strained to remember the traditions among the noble families. She did not know what the women in the villages said, if the shinobi had their own words spoken over the dead. The Daughter of Fire massaged her forehead and dismissed the servant boy as well, deciding to abandon her tiles and ready herself for the evening ahead. It was a pity. She was in no mood to endure wailing, and she looked terrible in black. 

* * *

 

The Daughter of Fire had been familiar with the shinobi of the House Guard most of her life, even though they mostly existed as shadows within deeper shadows. They were men in mesh suits with armored vests and soft-padded sandals that dulled their footsteps when they ran about in that peculiar way of theirs. She would sometimes lie awake and listen to the tap-tap-tap of their feet on the roof tiles. She had remarked to herself that they ran like a cat in the deep grass, or a lizard upon the water – fast and nearly silent, upon prey before they felt the breaths on the back of their necks. But these were silent men whose jobs were successful if they were only ignored by the lord’s family. Something was amiss if you knew they were about.

The first time she had seen a shinobi in any other light had been when she had attended the chunin exams with her mother, the Lady of Fire. They had been wrapped in light kimonos for the warmer weather, ceremonial headdresses and veils hiding their faces from the crowd. Usually, the Daughter of Fire despised the veils – they caught in her mouth when she tried to speak. However, that day they had felt like a shield.

She had not realized, within the jewelry box of her father’s palace, that there were shinobi who could command swarms, the lightning, the fire, and the wind. Who could put a man to sleep or paralyze them with a touch. They had terrified her. And when the laughing, screaming child who commanded sand ripped the red-eyed boy’s arm bloody her mother had taken her arm and hurried away from the arena, pausing only to lift her daughter’s veil and dry her tears.

They missed the attack that followed, arriving in the safety of the palace before the monsters and murderers took to the streets. But she slept in her room alone for the first time in her young life that night, for the servants had all fled and the guardians in the shadows were off on missions their own. She clung to a dagger with shaking hands, remembering how weak and small her willow-boned lump of a father had looked next to the gods in the arena.

When a shinobi finally appeared in her room during the wee hours of the morning, the smell of smoke still thick outside her window, she had been afraid. But the man had only given her a weary, reassuring smile and shifted the knife in her hands. “That is not the way one holds this weapon,” he had said in a warm whisper before retreating back into the shadows. The Daughter of Fire could not remember now when she had finally fallen asleep, only that she woke the next morning with the cool metal still firmly grasped in her sweating hands.

She had wondered then, for the first time, what it might be like to truly hold a weapon as the women in the exams had done. She had not realized before those battles that a woman could pick up a katana or dagger or shuriken and fight as a shinobi alongside a man. There had never been any such woman in the palace.

Many shinobi had died since that night, including members of the palace guard, but this was the first that had merited a visit from the Daimyo’s family. The Daughter of Fire wondered why as they approached the dead man’s home. The house was well-kept and elegant, and bristling with blushing flowers, but it was too small and too plain to belong to any lordly family. It was not, say, the Hyuuga Estate, with its high walls and noble décor and grand courtyard.

Although, speaking of the Hyuuga clan, there was one now: Hinata herself, flanked by a boy in a cocoon of a coat with dark glasses and another child accompanied by a large white dog. The Daughter of Fire had played with Hinata as a child while their mothers discussed this and that, and she had been told that Hinata had been nearly beaten to death by her own cousin only a few short years before. But she looked beautiful and poised now, if a bit reserved, her skin a fine porcelain turned to steel. She had foregone the garb of a lady for that of a warrior, and the Daughter of Fire wondered what it must be like to be so strong.

Right now, Hinata put her in mind of a graceful deer flanked by wolves. “Hinata,” the Daughter said, inclining her head. “I greet you.”

“My lady,” Hinata replied, moving a stray lock of inky hair from her face. Her pale violet eyes shone in the late afternoon light. “It is wonderful to see you again.” Hinata grasped the noblewoman’s arm and held it fast, and, after a moment’s thought, the Daughter of Fire returned the favor and put her soft hand in Hinata’s callused one. Was this truly the same girl she played dolls with?

“You have regrown your hair,” she found herself saying with a laugh.

Hinata flushed and smiled. “I thought it looked nicer.” The Daughter of Fire had to admit it did, especially with the symbol of the Leaf hanging like a delicate pendant from her swan-like neck. Her dark hair pooled like liquid shadow over her shoulders and made her look every inch the regal Hyuuga lady despite her garb.

The Daughter of Fire was ready to reply when she caught sight of her mother’s affronted face. Her mouth was a thin line, her eyes narrowed in a disapproving scowl. Usually, she would shrink from her mother’s disappointment, but she held a little faster in the presence of Hinata. “Pardon me, mother,” she murmured. She gave another nod, this time with more familiarity and depth, to her friend. “Excuse me.”

“Of course,” Hinata said with a sad smile. “My sensei is inside, waiting for you.”

The Daughter of Fire’s mother went so far as to tug on her kimono sleeve, a look of exasperation growing on her face. But her daughter was reluctant to leave her friend so soon after they had been reunited, and seeing the sandals of a shinobi wrapped like iron around Hinata’s delicate feet stoked a tiny spark of rebellion deep in her belly.

“I will be along shortly, Mother,” the Daughter of Fire said, in her haughtiest and most severe voice. She could not entirely suppress a wince when her mother gasped and looked ready to swat her before composing herself and striding into the home, a servant girl following her with the gifts of mourning.

Right before she entered the door, the wife of the Fire Daimyo turned to her and growled, “Remember, child, that we came here with a great and noble purpose. Would you not, in the same position, wish for the same?” The Daughter of Fire could not help but feel a twist of guilt at that, which wasn’t helped when she turned back to her friend to find that Hinata had paled at the exchange. Her companions had subtly backed away and were now very interested in the stucco paint on the house’s south wall.

The Daughter of Fire sighed. “I apologize for that, Lady Hinata. Your sensei is with the woman now, I suppose?”

Hinata shook her head vigorously. “No, you are mistaken, I fear. Yuuhi Kurenai is my sensei. She was Asuma Sarutobi’s … companion.”

“Ah. I did not know.”

“Did you even know his name?” Hinata asked, in as sharp a tone as her small, sweet voice could manage.

The Daughter of Fire flushed and looked at her feet. “There are so many dead lately. I – I had not bothered to find out.” She did not have to look up to see Hinata’s disapproval when she could feel it so keenly. Her mind swam with new understanding – Asuma was the son of the previous Hokage, and therefore did indeed merit the mourning of the Daimyo’s family. An old fear began to simmer again. She had assumed that she was facing a simple grieving widow, an ordinary woman: not the lover of a legend who was a respected shinobi in her own right. Did she even have the faculties about her to confront such a woman?

She felt rather than heard Hinata sigh, and nearly panicked when her friend began to turn to walk away. Hinata rocked on her feet to a sudden stop and said, almost to herself, “You would not do that, would you?”

Turning back to the desperate noblewoman, Hinata placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Kurenai will be pleased that you have come to see her,” she said with a smile. “Please go in. I will follow shortly.”

The Daughter of Fire barely managed to hide her gratitude enough not to collapse in an entirely undignified fashion. As it was, she managed a deep curtsy of thanks before scurrying to the door of the house.

* * *

 

Kurenai’s home was an explosion of delicate and exuberant plant life, from scarlet poppies to prickly cacti from the Land of Wind to a strange, spidery vine that incomprehensibly grew up a sheer wall before scuttling across the ceiling and drooping down into a chandelier of vibrant, glowing purple flowers. The plants reminded the Daughter of Fire of the greenhouses in the Daimyo’s gardens, filled with exotic and lush plants from faraway lands. But that was an exhibition only; it lacked the heart and care these living things clearly enjoyed.

Kurenai herself was seated on the floor with her mother, who had taken the shinobi’s hands in hers. The Daughter of Fire paused in shock for a moment. She had rarely seen her mother seated on the ground, least of all on the ground before someone without a drop of noble blood. “I will have my personal doctor check on you every week, to make sure all is well.”

Kurenai shook her head vigorously. “There is no need. I am under the finest care that can be imagined. I wouldn’t want us to be any trouble,” she added, placing a hand on her belly. “And the Hokage would have a thing or two to say about me seeing another doctor, I imagine!” she added with a laugh.

Kurenai herself was a striking woman, with wine-colored eyes and rich, dark hair that coiled at her shoulders. “You must forgive my appearance, and the mess, my lady,” she added, wringing her hands. “I’m afraid you have caught me unawares.”

The Lady of Fire dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “Nonsense,” she replied. “But it is time we got on with things, now that my errant daughter has arrived.”

The Daughter of Fire flushed at this and scurried up with a low curtsy to Kurenai. “My deepest apologies,” she said. “I am sorry for my rudeness, and sorry for your loss. May your days be blessed with peace.”

Kurenai laughed abruptly. “So formal!”

“We have brought you a gift,” the Lady of Fire said warmly. “You must forgive my daughter. She knows the way of this ceremony at the estate, but I have never taken her with me into the village to perform it. I am beginning to believe that was a mistake. So first, the gift, and then, we will talk.”

Kurenai gave the royal woman a quizzical look and then nodded hesitantly. The Lady of Fire nodded to the servant girl, who handed her an elegantly carved cedar box. Opening it, she revealed a small, blue urn filled with silver-veined, dried leaves the color of muddy moss. Kurenai’s eyebrows shot up and she gasped at the sight, and the Daughter of Fire swallowed her own shock.

The leaves were, according to legend, from the first tree planted by the Land of Fire’s founders in her father’s estate. Some even whispered the leaves were from the very tree that birthed all chakra itself, although few believed it. The tree, whatever it may have been, was now gone, but its leaves seemed to burn forever when ignited, an everlasting flame smelling of deep forests and summer days. There were few leaves left, and they were rarely distributed even among nobility. One burned each for her grandmother and grandfather in the family chapel, and even those felt like too much of a luxury at times.

“My lady,” Kurenai gasped, hands shaking as the Lady of Fire balanced the urn on both of their outstretched fingers, “I am not worthy of such a gift in my house.”

The Lady of Fire shook her head. “You are most worthy, as was the son of the Third. Daughter,” she said, glancing sharply at the Daughter of Fire, “help us hold this urn and speak the words with me.”

The Daughter of Fire quickly reached out and gently placed her fingers beneath Kurenai’s as her mother lit the leaves in the urn. They crackled to life with a soft, silver flame and filled the air with a sweet, thick scent that reminded her of honeysuckle.

“We gather here to honor the dead,” her mother began, and she quickly chimed in. “We gather here to keep the memory, we who are left behind. Accept this cloak, that the darkness may not touch you. Accept this flame, that the darkness may not bind you. Accept these words, that our light may surround you.” Her mother placed a white shawl with the symbol of Sarutobi’s clan embroidered on the back across Kurenai’s shoulders, and the Daughter of Fire and Kurenai continued to hold the urn until it became too warm to touch. Kurenai gently moved it to the small, makeshift shrine she had built for Asuma near one of the window boxes filled with flowers.

The Daughter of Fire felt a presence behind her and swiveled about to discover Hinata standing just inside the doorway, frozen in fear of disrupting this sacred ceremony. Her hands covered her mouth and her eyes shone with unshed tears.

Kurenai swiped a hand over her eyes. Tears had brightened them to the color of the poppies in her window. “I wish I had a proper hostess gift for you, my lady, in exchange for the honor you have done me.”

The Lady of Fire rose and settled in one of the larger chairs in the living room, the picture of royal grace once again. “I hope that you may do me a favor, Kurenai. I want to start a … a group of sorts, for the women in the village.”

Kurenai rose and shakily seated herself in another chair. Hinata breathlessly announced she would fetch some tea and disappeared into the kitchen. The Daughter of Fire settled onto a nest of pillows near the fireplace and waited attentively for her mother to explain herself.

“What sort of group?” Kurenai asked.

“I did come here to honor Asuma Sarutobi, Kurenai,” the Lady of Fire answered. “But I confess to an ulterior motive. I have given you the flame of the First Tree. We have spoken the words and given the gifts of mourning to you, when we previously only honored the highest of nobility with such. We are sisters, now.”

Kurenai fingered the delicate silver fringe on her new shawl. “Again, what sort of group?”

“I fear that what we have already endured is only a beginning. I felt it years ago, during the exams, when the Snake attacked us all and stole away with your school’s most promising student. There is darkness ahead, and cruelty, and destruction, and we must be able to rise up to it. I have no doubts in the ability of our shinobi, but there are women in the village with no such talent, including myself and my daughter. I refuse to be helpless in the face of this danger. I refuse to be without purpose.”

“You want me to teach you how to fight?” Kurenai asked with interest, taking a teacup from Hinata and downing the drink in one swallow. “Bring me something stronger, Hinata.” Her student accepted the cup and, red-faced, returned to the kitchen. The Daughter of Fire glanced worriedly at her mother, but if she disapproved, she did not show it.

“Partly,” she answered Kurenai. “I admit I would be happier knowing my way about a sword. Goodness knows my husband is all but useless with one.

“But I also want to find a purpose for those who may not wish to fight. I would have the days of weeping women left to tend fires and weave shrouds behind us. It is time we were useful. My daughter and I know few useful things, but we can sew and paint and make music. Others in the village can cook and build and heal and forge. We must be able to step in and do all of this at a moment’s notice. I would bring together a group of women, shinobi and civilians alike, to learn from each other. Both you and your lover were respected throughout the village. If I had your support, I feel as though we could bring many such women together.”

Kurenai accepted a glass of a dark liquid from Hinata and smiled. “I suppose I will need something to do with this baby on the way. I can’t very well go out and fight while carrying her.” She placed a loving hand on her belly again and sighed. “Very well. I will be happy to help lead such a group.” She laughed, a deep, throaty sound that made the Daughter of Fire feel safe and warm. Flexing her free arm, she shouted, “We can do it!”

As her mother began to discuss specifics with Kurenai, the Daughter of Fire realized she had been dismissed and rose, stretching. Hinata took the opportunity to take her hand and pull her outside. “That was very kind of your mother,” she murmured.

“I did not know she would do such a thing, or suggest such a thing,” the Daughter of Fire stammered. “What will Father think?” She looked down at her soft hands, bony and long-nailed. Could these hands – should these hands – learn such mean skills as stirring pots and hammering nails? The thought was scandalous, and strangely alluring.

Hinata laughed. “If I remember you father correctly, he will probably not even be aware that it’s happening until it is far too late.” The Daughter of Fire gaped in shock before realizing Hinata was quite correct and laughing along with her. Still, it felt strange – and a bit sacrilegious – to laugh at her honored father. But she was the sister of a shinobi now. She supposed it would not be considered quite out of place.

“I wonder if she could teach us to garden,” the Daughter of Fire mused. “I have always wanted to learn that, since I was small.”

“I am sure she could teach you.” Hinata said. “She has quite the talent with plants. And … Master Asuma always liked them.”

“I would especially like to know how to grow that unusual plant hanging from her ceiling.”

Hinata paused a moment in confusion before finally letting out a giggle. “Oh, that plant is not real. Or rather, it’s mostly not real. It’s an illusion crafted by my sensei’s genjutsu. She uses a stronger version to imprison criminals on missions.”

“A genjutsu?!” The only other time the Daughter of Fire had had a brush with genjutsu was the day after the attack on the arena, when her father and brother and their servants staggered back into the palace, having spent the better part of a day and night under a curse of sleeping and troubled dreams. It had frightened her. But the vines hanging from Kurenai’s ceiling had not been frightening, only strangely beautiful and enchantingly impossible.

“Are they a trap?” she asked.

Hinata shook her head. “No, only a decoration. Not all jutsus are meant to be used for destruction, my lady. Some are merely meant to bring beauty into the world.”

“I do not think I will be simply ‘my lady’ or ‘Daughter of Fire’ for much longer,” the daughter of the Daimyo of Fire said. “Call me by my true name, Hinata. Call me Kira.”

Hinata grinned and nudged her friend in the shoulder in a way the Daughter of Fire would not have allowed, but, Kira, well, Kira was different. She linked arms with her friend as they walked out of Kurenai’s yard and into the streets, where she was surprisingly unbothered by the heat and the dust being kicked up on her kimono. “By the way, I should let you know that my brother has eyes on both you and your sister. He intends to start courting you in a season or two, in earnest.”

“I wonder what my father will say about that,” Hinata said with a bashful smile. “I cannot speak for Hanabi, but as for me – I – I have spoken for myself.” She flushed and hid her face in her shoulder.

“Who is this lucky young lord?” Kira asked, leaning in.

Hinata recomposed herself, but could not quite clear the blush from her cheeks. “No one you would know, I am afraid.” She cleared her throat.

“We ought to start gathering women for your mother’s group,” Hinata said. “I know of a few who may help. A girl in a local ramen shop, and another friend of mine who works as a healer. She has just re-joined a team, I believe, but … it cannot hurt to bring her expertise in, and that of her teammates.” Hinata was scarlet all over again.

“Then by all means, let us go find our sisters,” Kira said with a smile as they stepped into the bustling streets of the village.


End file.
